Back to Search
Start Over
Digital plagiarism: An experimental study of the effect of instructional goals and copy-and-paste affordance.
- Source :
-
Computers & Education . Apr2015, Vol. 83, p44-56. 13p. - Publication Year :
- 2015
-
Abstract
- This paper presents an empirical study of digital plagiarism. Under two experimental conditions, undergraduate writers were guided by different achievement goals to write an essay with or without the copy-and-paste function on a website. The study focused on two possible influences on digital plagiarism, a) instructional goals for writing, and b) the affordances of digital learning environments specifically the availability of a copy-paste function. A 2 × 2 factorial design was used to analyze the effects of these contextual variables on digital plagiarism. Results indicated that overall 79.5% of the writers engaged in digital plagiarism. There was a significant interaction in which instructional performance goals lead to more plagiarism when copy-paste is available. Findings highlight individual-environment interactions, including a writer's adopted goals for writing as set by writing prompt instructions (learning goals vs. performance goals) and the affordances of the writing environment including the ease of copy-paste or precautions taken to protect text (such as using jpegs of text). Rather than being principally directed by student's beliefs prior to, or when they begin a writing task, the on-the-fly interactions they have during the writing task may best explain their tendency toward plagiarism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
Details
- Language :
- English
- ISSN :
- 03601315
- Volume :
- 83
- Database :
- Academic Search Index
- Journal :
- Computers & Education
- Publication Type :
- Academic Journal
- Accession number :
- 100850859
- Full Text :
- https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compedu.2014.12.016